The Spirit Mage (The Blackwood Saga Book 2) Read online

  Contents

  Chapters

  1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • 10 • 11 • 12 • 13 • 14 • 15 • 16 • 17 • 18 • 19 • 20 • 21 • 22 • 23 • 24 • 25 • 26 • 27 • 28 • 29 • 30 • 31 • 32 • 33 • 34 • 35 • 36 • 37 • 38 • 39 • 40 • 41 • 42 • 43 • 44 • 45 • 46 • 47 • 48 • 49 • 50 • 51 • 52 • 53 • 54 • 55 • 56

  Acknowledgments

  About The Author

  THE SPIRIT MAGE

  Book II of

  The Blackwood Saga

  Layton Green

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, and events are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  THE SPIRIT MAGE, Book II of the Blackwood Saga, copyright © 2017, Layton Green

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Cloaked Traveler Press.

  Cover design by Sammy Yuen.

  Interior by QA Productions

  Books by Layton Green

  THE DOMINIC GREY SERIES

  The Summoner

  The Egyptian

  The Diabolist

  The Shadow Cartel

  The Resurrector

  The Reaper’s Game (Novella)

  THE BLACKWOOD SAGA

  Book One: The Brothers Three

  Book Two: The Spirit Mage

  Book Three: The Last Cleric (Forthcoming)

  OTHER WORKS

  The Letterbox

  The Metaxy Project

  Hemingway’s Ghost (Novella)

  To the Dreamers

  ZEDOCK’S CITADEL, URFE

  -1-

  A rising tide of fear threatened to swallow Will Blackwood whole as he placed his palms on the glass wall and stared down at the swamp surrounding the obelisk of Zedock the necromancer. Ghostly tendrils of Spanish moss hung from the trees, brackish water and clumps of cypress roots stretched to the horizon. Less than an hour ago, he and Caleb and Yasmina had returned through the portal to Urfe and managed to kill Zedock. While savoring the fact that they were still alive, the portal had been destroyed and they had no idea how to get home.

  “Guys,” Yasmina said, her lilting Brazilian accent sounding less dazed and more shrill than the last time she had asked the question, “where are we?”

  “Hell,” Caleb said. He was sprawled in Zedock’s high-backed chair near the center of the room, feet resting on a telescope, wavy dark hair framing his face.

  Will took long deep breaths through his nose, corralling his emotions. He was bolstered by the knowledge that his brother and Yasmina needed him.

  Yasmina: PhD student in zoology, brilliant and beautiful, Caleb’s ex-girlfriend and the only woman back home he had dated for more than five minutes.

  A relationship which had brought her nothing but grief, Will thought, culminating with Zedock kidnapping her for leverage and dragging her through the portal. Will tried not to look at the shattered ring of azantite on the other side of the room, a constant reminder that they were trapped in this world of dreams and nightmares.

  “Tell her,” he said to his brother. “Tell her everything.”

  Caleb shrugged, and then he did.

  Told her how Zedock the necromancer had come to New Orleans to steal the sword their father had bequeathed to Will, how Salomon had given them a key that transported them to a world called Urfe, how the three brothers had traveled with the adventuress Mala and her team of mercenaries across the wilds of the Southern Protectorate to find a trio of magical items hidden in a geomancer’s keep.

  The last part she already knew: they had returned to Earth through the now-broken portal to wage an epic battle against Zedock, defeating him with the help of the necromancer’s own arrogance, a dose of luck, and a sword—Will’s sword—that could somehow cut through magic.

  Yasmina’s hazel eyes had opened as wide as an owl’s. Her long limbs collapsed like a folding chair as she sank to the floor, her back against a bronze chest. Will watched her carefully. He knew all too well that the fine line between panic and control was the difference between life and death in this world.

  “Are we dreaming?” she asked quietly, squeezing her eyes shut and then pinching herself. “Tell me I’m dreaming.”

  Caleb slowly shook his head.

  “What do we do?” she whispered, her voice quivery but laced with an undercurrent of strength. “How do we get back?”

  She’s taking it better than we did, Will thought.

  “We don’t know,” Caleb said, “which is why I vote we stay put. We have shelter, there must be some food around here, and I have no interest in traipsing through the Swamp of Death.”

  “And when the supplies run out?” Will said.

  “We’ll deal with that when it happens. Maybe Salomon will come and get us.”

  “Salomon stood and watched while Zedock tried to kill us. We’re specimens under glass to him.”

  “So what’s your grand plan, little brother?”

  Will rested his hand on the hilt of his sheathed sword. The movement was becoming instinctive. “I vote we go to New Victoria. We’re not getting home by staying here.”

  “New Victoria?” Yasmina echoed.

  “It’s New Orleans,” Caleb said, “only it’s not. Trust me, it has to be seen to be believed.” He turned back to Will. “And if we make it through the swamp alive, then what? Walk into the Wizard District and ask someone for help? They’ll throw us straight in the Fens.”

  “It’s a huge city,” Will said. “There’s got to be someone there who can help us. Someone who knows something.”

  Caleb gave a bitter laugh. “I sort of gathered that the whole portal-between-worlds thing is extremely rare. I don’t think we’ll find one at the corner magic store.”

  “Zedock had one. There has to be others.”

  Yasmina was looking back and forth between the two of them as if they had just sprouted horns and tails.

  “Don’t forget,” Caleb said, giving the vertical shaft in the center of the room a nervous glance, “that we just killed a wizard. What if the Congregation finds out?”

  “How would they?”

  “I don’t know, the same way they travel across worlds and fly through the air and raise the undead?”

  “They’re not all-powerful. Like you said,” Will said grimly, “we just killed one.”

  “Whatever.” Caleb kicked his feet up and put his head in his hands, pausing for a long beat before he looked up. “What about Val and Lance?” he said quietly. “We just left them.”

  Yasmina walked over to squeeze his hand. “You didn’t leave them. You came for me.”

  Will shuddered away the memory of their oldest brother and Lance in the cemetery, surrounded by hordes of the undead. He could only pray that when Zedock had gone through the portal, it had severed the connection to his creations. “Even more reason to get back,” he said.

  Caleb, looking like a dashing pirate captain in his leather breeches and a frilly white shirt, sleeves rolled up to expose the black leather bracers their father had left him, took a slender iron filing out of his pocket, and rose to inspect the bronze chest next to Yasmina. He ran his fingers over the surface, then probed the iron clasp and padlock. Will knew he was still processing the loss of Marguerite, his lover who had suffered a grave—perhaps fatal—injury in Leonidus’s dungeon.

  “Caleb?” Yasmina asked, surprised.
/>   “A few skills I picked up over here,” he said.

  Dressed in a brown leather vest and breeches, Will tossed his chin-length blond hair out of his face and watched his brother work. The long hair and stubble were products of the month-long journey to the geomancer’s keep.

  “Seems okay,” Caleb muttered to himself, then removed the padlock and lifted the lid. A dazzling array of gemstones and coins glittered back at them. Yasmina’s eyes widened again.

  Will scooped up a handful of rough-cut diamonds. “These won’t hurt our bargaining power.”

  With a dexterous movement, Caleb pocketed a handful of coins. “I wouldn’t mind spending this loot in the French Quarter, but it won’t help us survive the swamp. And I haven’t agreed to go anywhere yet.”

  Will threw his hands up. “Someone’s going to come here and check on Zedock eventually. What if it’s another wizard? Or a majitsu?”

  Caleb paled at the mention of the frightening warrior monks, themselves possessed of low level magical ability, who served as bodyguards for the wizards. He started to respond, but Yasmina cut him off with a finger. “Did you hear that?”

  Will stilled to listen. From somewhere down below, increasing in volume as it echoed up through the wizard chute, came the clink of metal armor and the slap of booted heels.

  Someone was climbing the stairs.

  NEW YORK CITY

  -2-

  Valjean Blackwood checked his watch once again. A twitch of the wrist that had become an obsession over the last few days, ever since his younger brothers had traveled through a one-way portal to the citadel of a feared necromancer named Zedock.

  Will and Caleb were trapped in a dark fantasy version of Earth—and Val had no idea how to help them.

  According to Salomon, an old man with silver eyes who might be a crackpot and who might be a two-thousand year old wizard of immense power, time passed at a different rate in Zedock’s world. Presently, a ratio of sixty days in the other world for every one on Earth.

  Which meant, if the time differential held, that his brothers had been trapped on Urfe for months. At best, they had found a way to escape but were stranded.

  And at worst . . .

  Val, too, had visited the other world. When he and his brothers had found Zedock’s fortress at the end of their journey, they were forced to pole through a swamp full of undead creatures reaching mindlessly out of the water, horrific creations of the necromancer.

  So Val didn’t want to think about the worst.

  Reeling from lack of sleep, shaking with rage and impotence, he stared at the sprawl of Manhattan outside the fiftieth-floor window of his law office and thought about how impossible it seemed that there was another dimension, or world, or universe out there from which Val had narrowly escaped. A world of manticores and cave fiends, magic swords and potions, spirit mages and necromancers. Wizard-monks who could shatter walls with their fists, a city of colored spires so beautiful it took his breath away.

  His eyes slipped to the staff hidden behind his desk. Five feet of fortified oak topped by a crescent moon of azantite, a milky-white stone so thin and strong a professional jeweler said it shouldn’t exist.

  A staff Val’s father had left for him before he died.

  A wizard’s staff.

  Someone knocked on the door. Val blinked away his exhaustion. “Come in.”

  With hooded eyes, Val watched Mari Winslow step through the door in red-rimmed glasses and a grey pantsuit that clung to her svelte figure. A half-American, half-Swedish brunette, Mari was only five years older than Val’s thirty-one but already head of the powerful Compensation Committee.

  She was also Val’s mentor, and was probably checking in to see why he hadn’t left his office for two days straight. Just what I need, he thought.

  Masking the turmoil raging within, Val arched his eyebrows and extended an upturned palm towards the sofa. Mari smoothed her pants as she sat. She looked a decade younger than her age, and the suitors who had crashed against the rocky shores of Mari Winslow were outnumbered only by the legions of defeated opposing counsel.

  Spit it out, Val wanted to say, and let me get back to work.

  “What is it, Mari?” he said wearily.

  “How’s the Myrddinus research coming?”

  Val stilled. The Myrddinus was a secret society dedicated to the exploration of magical phenomena, and his only hope of reaching his brothers. Val’s godfather, Charlie Zalinski—the man who had told Val and his brothers about Urfe, before he was turned into a zombie by Zedock—had claimed to be a member of the Myrddinus, along with Val’s father.

  Despite his best efforts, neither Val nor his junior associate had turned up anything about the Myrddinus other than what Val already knew, which was that Myrddin might refer to a Welsh historical figure who may or may not have inspired the Arthurian legend of Merlin.

  “Fine,” Val said, wondering how Mari knew what he was researching.

  Her mouth curled into a smirk. “Myrddinus. A strange name for a research project.”

  “It’s a project for a financial firm in Wales.” He waved a hand. “They think a competitor might have set up a shadow company and absconded with certain assets.”

  “And? Have they?”

  “I’m still researching,” he said evenly.

  “Perhaps you’re not taking the right angle.”

  “It’s possible. I just need a little more time.”

  “Or,” she said, leaning forward to place a business card on his desk, “perhaps you need a little assistance from the inside.”

  Val’s breath caught in his throat as he reached for the card. On the front was a colorful depiction of an Ouroboros, a serpent eating its own tail. Inside the motif was a collection of runes and astrological symbols. He flipped the card over, already knowing what name would be printed on the back.

  Myrddinus.

  She rose. “Tomorrow night, midnight, my office. Don’t be late.”

  “Tonight,” Val croaked, as Mari rose for the door. His voice sounded hoarse and desperate to his own ears. “It has to be tonight.”

  “I have plans—”

  He grasped for leverage. “You’re aware of what happened in New Orleans on Halloween?”

  Mari stopped with a hand on the door. “A terrorist blew up a cemetery. The whole country’s aware.”

  “A terrorist?” Val said. “You really believe that?”

  She paused a beat. “And?”

  “Did you know Charlie Zalinski was my godfather?”

  Her face betrayed no surprise. “Was? Do you know where he is? We haven’t heard from him since—” her eyes widened—“Halloween.”

  “Tonight,” Val said, leaning forward and pressing his palms into the desk. “We meet tonight.”

  “What happened in New Orleans, Val?”

  He refused to respond, and Mari’s eyes flashed before she swept out of his office.

  Ten minutes until midnight. A cold November wind buffeted Val’s camelhair coat and expensive jeans as he strode through the subdued streets of Lower Manhattan. Not knowing what to expect, he ignored the stares of passersby and gripped his father’s six-foot azantite staff. He was also carrying the Amulet of Shielding and the Ring of Shadows he and his brothers had found in the castle of the geomancer Leonidus.

  After a few more hours of fruitless research at his Lower East Side loft, Val had spent the evening riding waves of feverish hope and tempered expectations. Even if Mari was part of the Myrddinus, the organization might have no clue how to bridge the two worlds.

  Memories crowded his head. Charlie breaking the news that his father had fallen to his death while searching for Durendal, the lost sword of Charlemagne, during an archeological expedition. Val’s mother wandering the mental institution in her dressing gown, adrift in her own mind since losing her husband.

  The deaths of Alexander and Hashi and Fochik. Mala lost, Lance crucified by Zedock. Caleb racing for the portal after the necromancer escaped carrying Yas
mina. Will diving after Caleb and plunging through the portal with him.

  Val willed his thoughts away when he reached his building. He took the elevator to the fifty-fifth floor and strode down the deserted hallway to Mari’s office. She was sitting behind a pile of documents stacked neatly on her desk, looking fresh and alert. When Val walked in, her eyes latched on to his staff like a cobra mesmerized by a snake charmer.

  “Nice walking stick,” she said. “Bad knees?”

  Val sat across from her, deciding not to mince words. He rarely did. “If you knew who I was, why’d you wait so long to approach me?”

  “Your father’s instructions. He asked us to hold off until you exhibited an interest in finding us.”

  Val balled his fists to control his anger, reminding himself she wasn’t aware of his brothers’ plight.

  Or was she?

  “Obviously, your father didn’t tell you very much. You don’t know anything about us, do you?”

  “How many of you are there?”

  She shrugged. “In North America? A few handfuls.” She rose to throw a red leather jacket over slacks and a form-fitting black sweater. “Let’s take a walk.”

  “Where?”

  “To the home of the Myrddinus in New York City, of course. I think you’d be an asset to the organization, and we have something you might be interested in.”

  Val folded his arms. “Stop being coy, Mari. What is it?”

  “Your father left something for you.”

  -3-

  Will, Caleb, and Yasmina crept to the edge of the wizard’s shaft in the center of the floor. They risked a glance down and saw a knight in full plate mail climbing the staircase that spiraled upward through the center of the shaft. The slits in the knight’s visor glowed with an eerie green light, and his gloved right hand was gripping a broadsword.

  “You still want to stick around?” Will whispered to Caleb.

  Caleb was crouched on the balls of his feet, like a wild animal that wanted to bolt but had nowhere to go. Yasmina backed away from the shaft. “What do we do?”